


The Color of Mourning

by MissILikeTooManyFandoms



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon, Young Kara, young Alex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-26 15:00:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7578583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissILikeTooManyFandoms/pseuds/MissILikeTooManyFandoms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alex and Kara speak of Krypton after Jeremiah's funeral.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Color of Mourning

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a while but hopefully I'll be posting a bit more frequently now. This idea has been bouncing around for a while now and it was kind of therapeutic to write. Let me know what y'all think.
> 
> Edit: Sort of a super late submission to Summer of Supergirl and the whole remembering Krypton idea.

A plane crash in the Amazon. A funeral without a body. Alex peeled off her stockings while her head and heart ached, throbbing in tandem until she felt nothing at all, except the rhythm of her pulse. Hushed voices slipped through the cracks in her wooden floor. Condolences. Fond memories. The stragglers from the service, the ones who had been bringing food to the house every day for a week. Not close friends and relatives, the people who had to act, who had to pretend to care the most, the perfect image of a mourner, of compassion.

Then Kara came through their door, feet bare, her black dress stark against her skin. It was terribly wrinkled and not from the stress of the day, Alex knew, but from Kara picking at the fabric. She had been highly uncomfortable when the color had been foisted on her. Eliza, of course had not noticed, but Alex had.

_“What’s wrong with it? Is it itchy or something?” Alex tried to keep her voice level. They were in public and the snooty department store workers already seemed displeased with their appearance but really Alex just felt like a raw nerve. They were burying her father without actually burying him and the loss, the reality, was sinking in too fast and Alex was drowning and now her stupid alien foster sister was being dramatic about a stupid dress. Alex wanted to scream. Kara picked at the dress again and Alex nearly lunged but then Kara spoke. Her voice soft and quiet. Almost indiscernible above the hum of the mall._

_“White is the color of mourning on Krypton.” Kara hiccuped on “is,” realizing her mistake but she did not bother to correct it. Alex hardly noticed. Stunned by the admission. In over a year, Kara had not once spoken of Krypton. Not even in passing, as one would mention a place they had visited._

_“Oh.” They stood in silence, Kara bouncing and shuffling her feet while the overwhelming guilt that had been eating at Alex since the literal men in black showed up, leaving tragedy and fear in their wake, since Alex first cried over Jeremiah, tore at her heart worse than grief. She was mourning her father, broken beyond repair over the trauma, the suddenness, the wrongness while she stared Kara in the face, a refugee from a dead world, a dead race. Loss was not a game to be won. There was no scoresheet to compare but the guilt was there when Alex could barely fathom her own loss nonetheless what Kara had suffered._

_When Eliza was nearly out of the store, on the phone with whichever consoler of the hour, Alex bought Kara a woven white bracelet._

They sat on Alex’s bed, slouching in defiance to the perfect posturing of the day. Kara’s even, albeit a bit heavy, breathing soothed Alex. They were not quite shoulder to shoulder, but she still felt the heat radiating off her sister. They had gone on a trip two months prior, staying in some hotel for some conference her mother had to attend as the leading expert in her field. No one mentioned the shared byline on all of her papers. Jeremiah Danvers had vanished from the world of science months before he had died. Kara and Alex had to share a bed and at the time it was the worst thing that had ever happened to Alex. Her freakish alien sister was too warm and of course latched on to her in her sleep, like some sort of Kryptonian leach. She had woken up sweating and cursing, having to peel her t-shirt from her skin.

Now, the heat was a comfort.

“Who’s still left?” Alex could hear her mother berating her in the back of her mind but at this point she hardly cared if Kara used her powers.

“Seven people. I don’t know any of them though.” Kara had met plenty of Danvers relatives in the year she had been living with them and even more during the visitations but there was no telling who still sat with Eliza downstairs. They lapsed back into silence. Kara fiddled with the bracelet on her wrist and Alex stared.

 _“White is the color of mourning on Krypton”_ echoed in her mind. She had been playing it on loop nearly all day. Every time she saw Kara’s wrist or the way her fingers twitched while she tried to break the habit of playing with it. When Kara had first arrived, that was all Alex had wanted to talk about. Krypton. The alien, dead world that had given them Superman and now a strange teenage girl. What was it like? Did Kara have homework? What about the plants and the animals? Alex had always been interested in science, in her parents’ work, but suddenly having a foster sister from a literal different planet sparked Alex’s curiosity in a way that nothing really had before. Kara could not talk about it though. Any of it. All Alex knew for sure was that Krypton did not have birds. She knew it was insensitive and rude but Alex almost could not help herself. Another planet. A civilization advanced enough to accomplish deep space travel. Deep space even greater than any human could fathom.

She stopped asking but her questions never ended. Neither did Kara’s, but her questions were different. Bubbly, fierce curiosity mixed with the need to survive, to fit in. Alex always answered.

“Alex, what was it that...that they put over the coffin?” Alex nearly jerked at the suddenness of Kara’s voice. Her eyes flickered over the alarm clock by her bed. They had been sitting in silence for a shockingly long period of time. Even the voices from the floor had dwindled. Nearly silent.

“A vault. It protects the coffin.”

“But…”

“I know, Kara, it’s just...tradition. It’s how things are done.” Alex watched Kara pick at her bracelet. The clock on the nightstand ticked away, the numbers swimming in and out of focus as Alex stared. _“White is the color of mourning on Krypton”_ seemed to echo between them, the cadence in tandem with Kara’s movements as she picked and turned and toyed with the bracelet. Alex almost felt sick, dizzy, as if the room was spinning and she was still. Thinking about Kara’s life before tended to do that. Her life before they buried an empty box was not far behind. Alex heard her mother’s steps on the stairs before Kara’s head jerked up.

Alex had already slid out of her dress and was pulling on sleep shorts when her mother poked her head in. The girls stared at Eliza for several beats, in silence, before she gave a tired, sad smile.

“Goodnight girls.” When she shut the door, Alex was caught between wanting to laugh and cry, but she stood stoically, arms half in her t-shirt while Kara pulled on her own pajamas, glasses stuck resolutely to her face.

Kara was still twisting her bracelet around when Alex finally climbed into bed. Kara stood at her own bed, fingers wrapped around her wrist while she stared hard at her quilt. Alex wondered if she was seeking the same answers she had sought in the alarm clock but Alex could not incinerate her blankets just by a forceful look so she shuffled over, her shoulder brushing the wall by her bed. The movement and purposeful tap against Alex’s spare pillow drew Kara’s eye and with a tiny smile that warmed Alex just a bit where the loss of her father ached heavily in her chest, Kara moved around her bed and slipped beneath the covers.

Neither had remembered to turn off their light but neither made to move. They laid side by side on the bed, shoulders brushing as they breathed. Kara’s glasses still rested on her nose.

“Kara?” Their fan spun a bit lazily and the light from it flickered a bit but Alex took comfort as if they were nestled close in the dark. Her alarm clock reminded her that it had not even struck ten yet but it felt like midnight, the quiet, nervous sort of time for Alex to break a little. When Kara turned, eyes too bright and a little shimmery, Alex broke a little more. “Can you tell me about Krypton?”

“Like a bedtime story?” Kara’s eyes flickered toward the bookshelf across the room, where _Harry Potter_ and _The Outsiders_ rested.

“Yeah. Like a bedtime story.” They were whispering and it made Alex feel a little better.

“Krypton is…” Alex took Kara’s hand as her voice wavered, “was...like Earth and not at all. We had oceans and deserts and mountains, but our sun, Rao, is red. Rao must still be there. Rao has to be.” Alex squeezed Kara’s fingers. “Our cities were made of shining spires. Everything shimmered under Rao’s light. Like living in castles of crystal and glass. I grew up in Argo City. The Jewel of Krypton. It was especially beautiful and bright. The air was clear.”

Alex’s brow furrowed a bit as she listened, but as Kara continued she began to understand. It only made her heart ache more.

“A year before...before I was sent here, we moved to Kryptonopolis, the capital. That’s where Kal-El was born. The capital was beautiful too, with even higher and grander spires but the air was thick. Smog. It was difficult to breathe in the last few weeks.” Kara’s voice began to quake and Alex scrambled but Kara took a breath, turning a bit more to face Alex. “We had traditions like yours.” Alex almost did not remember what she had said.

“Like wearing white for-”

“Rao is not just Krypton’s sun. We, well, we worship Rao. In a sort of literal sense. Eons ago it was more like your religions, well the ones on Earth, but to us. Me. Rao is the life giver. There wouldn’t be Krypton without Rao. I get my powers from your Sun and we understood what Rao’s red light was to us.”

It was a little jumbled and confusing but Alex understood.

“We don’t...didn’t bury our dead but we had coffins. Kind of. They were like my pod, the ship I came to Earth in. Ships for one occupant. Then the pod would be sent to Rao.”

“You shot bodies into your sun?” Alex snapped her mouth shut with an audible click when her mind caught up to what she was saying but the words hung in the air between them. Alex and Kara stared at each other and then they burst into laughter. Tears tracked their way down Kara’s face but they were just as much in joy as they were in sadness.

“Yeah. We shot bodies into our sun. It sounds a little ridiculous I guess.” Kara spoke, whispering again as their laughter died down.

“Well, we burn bodies too. Cremate them. It’s kind of the same thing when you think about it. I think it’d be cool to be shot into the Sun.”

“Well...uh...before someone is sent to Rao, there’s a prayer. A female family member would lead it.”

“Is that what you were whispering at the service? I couldn’t make out the words.”

“No. That one was different.”

“Because my father wasn’t Kryptonian?”

“No. Because it should be the oldest surviving female. There are other prayers spoken privately or when there isn’t a female to lead.” Kara’s fingers twitched a bit and Alex bet she was thinking of her bracelet. Kara knew two prayers for the dead. At least. It was not hard for Alex to piece together that no matter how devout a soul could be, that Kara could only know such from practice. She wondered how many funerals Kara attended before rocketing from a dead world. Alex was no stranger to them either but she certainly did not know any prayers. “So, customarily, Eliza would say the prayer.” Alex wondered if Kara had attended the funerals of grandparents as she had. “But...I can teach it to you. If you’d like. I know you don’t really...um...believe in Rao but-”

“Rao’s out there, Kara. And it’s real. You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Rao, right? That’s enough for me. And...I think my dad would have liked the idea of a Kryptonian funeral.” Alex had hardly thought the words, nonetheless spoken them, in a week but it hurt just a little less this time when she spoke of her father.

“So it starts like this…” The light was still on and the fan shook a little as it spun and Kara still had her glasses on but for the first time since everything had fallen apart, Alex felt a little less lost and Kara felt a little more like she was home.


End file.
